Nintendo has a habit of switching things up in sequels, and especially in the NES days that tendency resulted in some gloriously divergent sophomore installments. Zelda II: The Adventure of Link famously swapped overhead adventuring for side-scrolling action, Super Mario Bros. 2 (in the West, at least) exchanged running-and-jumping for ballistic gardening, and Fire Emblem Gaiden turned the then-young tactics series sideways by adding dungeons, towns, random battles, and all sorts of RPG trappings to its chess-like core.

Those first two examples are well known, but as a Japan-only sequel to the first Famicom Fire Emblem, Gaiden hasn’t had much of a place in the Western gaming cannon — until now. After the hugely successful Awakening and Fates showed the series is right at home on the 3DS, Nintendo has brought it full circle with Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, a remake of Gaiden for the modern age. It was the last Fire Emblem on the Famicom, and now the last on the 3DS, and we can’t think of a better swansong — this is a brilliant strategy RPG that has something for everyone, from Fates and Awakening fans and old-school Fire Emblem fiends to JRPG junkies in general.

Fire Emblem Echoes starts off in the middle of a childhood love story; two young friends named Alm and Celica make a promise to stay by each others’ side, as they dream of adventure and a life beyond their Valentian village of Ram. The Valentia they know is a continent built on an uneasy truce, bisected by the dueling gods of Duma, with his highly-regimented northern kingdom of Rigel, and Mila, with her kind and carefree paradise of Zofia in the South. After a quick series of catastrophic events Alm and Celica find themselves separated, and eventually raised in different lands; you meet them again a decade or so in the future, and take control of the two heroes in turn as you direct them on their individual missions to help pull the continent out of chaos — Alm to help quell a Zofian coup, and Celica to find the goddess Mila.

Echoes’ narrative arc is engaging, snappily-paced, and sweetly character-focused; it’s also almost reassuringly straightforward after Fates’ timeline-hopping epic, and we appreciated the storybook-style approach. It helps that the characters themselves are likable and well-drawn; Alm and Celica especially are eminently appealing, but their friends and followers are likewise lovingly portrayed, and though Celica’s forces start off with quite a bit more personality than Alm’s, things even out quickly enough.

Right away, the fact that you’ll be switching between two heroes commanding two different armies will clue you into the fact that Echoes isn’t Fire Emblem as usual, but the action kicks off with an even more unexpected twist than that. When you gain control of Alm in Chapter 1, the first thing you’ll see isn’t the overhead chessboard view of an SRPG battlefield, but rather a first-person view of a charmingly pastoral village, complete with a Professor Layton-style interface for speaking to villagers; you move from scene to scene and examine the background for items and information. This is one of Echoes’ new additions, and it’s a pleasantly downtempo pastime that we really enjoyed; villages and explorable towns, shrines, and castles in this format usually bookend the traditional story battles, and go a long way towards giving Echoes more of a JRPG feel.

Outside of these point-and-click areas, you’ll move through Valentia mostly via an overhead world map, which allows you to engage enemy forces en route to your destinations of either story battles or dungeons. Once you get on the battlefield, Echoes plays similarly to past Fire Emblems and other strategy RPGs: you’ll lead your active army from a birds-eye perspective, moving units individually in turn over a gridded map and, when in range, engaging enemies in one-on-one fights. These smaller skirmishes take place straight on the map — glimpsed in glorious detail through a delightful zoom-in effect — and their outcomes can largely be predicted before you ‘confirm’ them, letting you plan out moves and try to stay a step or two ahead of the enemy. Along with melee attacks, ranged weapons and magic, characters can also use special abilities, interact with environmental objects, and take advantage of terrain to gain the upper hand.

In the main story missions victory is usually secured by besting all enemy units. Playing on Normal mode (there’s also an Easy difficulty), Echoes feels somewhere in-between the relative breeze of Fates' Birthright and the crushing desperation of Conquest, in our estimation — perhaps not the challenge the hardest of core are looking for, but it should be a nice balance for most. As in the other 3DS Fire Emblem games, there’s the option to play with perma-death on or off — ‘on’ meaning units which fall in battle won’t pop back to life afterwards — but there’s a new introduction in Echoes which also helps take a bit of sting out of unfortunate tactical decisions.

Mila’s Turnwheel is an in-game artifact which lets you turn back time, in terms of either entire turns or individual actions, effectively letting you ‘rewind’ and try out different paths if an initial strategy doesn’t work out. You can use it three times per battle (or dungeon) at the start, and extend that limit by finding cogs hidden around Valentia as you play. While perma-death-purists might balk at the impudence of rewriting fate, we loved this feature — not only because it saved our heroic hides on more than one occasion, forgoing the frustration of a half-hour redo for a quick re-calculation, but also because it helped us learn from mistakes and actually improve our strategic thinking. Dispatched a foe with your strongest unit, but realized just after that your up-and-coming villager could’ve done the trick? Rub the Turnwheel and give them their rightful time in the spotlight. Attacked an enemy from a position that left you open for retaliation? Run time back a turn and sneak in from the safe side. These are the kinds of tactical adjustments that most people wouldn’t take the time to soft-reset a whole battle for, but that you can freely avail yourself of when you’ve got a few spins of the wheel left; we loved having that freedom.

Outside of the main story battles, the other destinations you’ll find on your world map are the dungeons — a modern interpretation of Gaiden’s flagship feature back in the day. These are fantastic. They let you roam catacombs as either Alm or Celiac from a behind-the-shoulder view, as enemies roam the halls. You have full analogue control of your character with the Circle Pad and can attack with the A button; as in full-on dungeon crawlers like Shin Megami Tensei IV, slicing into the enemy first will catch them off guard, letting you start the ensuing battle with an HP advantage, while being blindsided instead will add a few extra enemies to the opposing army. The squad battles you’ll fight in dungeons are quick and not as interesting or involved as the full-on tactical story missions, but in the depths you’ll also have to deal with Fatigue — HP will fully heal after each battle, but as your units take more damage, they’ll grow weary of fighting, and will need to eat food (procured from villages) or stop by a statue of Mila to restore their energy.

Both village exploration and dungeon crawling are enjoyable in their own right, but the gameplay loop they inspire as a whole is the real standout. It’s a wonderful feeling to wander into an unfamiliar fort, speak with a few inhabitants, pick up some weapons, shields and provisions in a first-person hidden-object game, and then go use them immediately in a full-on battle, before heading into a new village to report on your work at the local tavern and start over again.

That addicting cycle is in addition to weapons forging, enjoyable point-and-click-style side-quests, searching for memory shards (which flesh out the story in anachronistic flashbacks), StreetPass card trading, and amiibo integration — which lets you summon in illusory heroes from other Fire Emblem games to help you in battle. Even without a My Castle equivalent, there’s plenty to do in Echoes, and the variety even in the main gameplay loop means progress is steady and swift.

Since battle is such an important component of most of Echoes’ gameplay patterns, one of the first things that will stand out to Fire Emblem veterans here is the maps. Most of the main missions and story battles take place on the type of intricate, puzzle-like maps we’ve come to expect from the series, and the best of these are brilliant. They feel well-designed, tightly scaled, and are (for the most part) challenging enough to require strategy without resorting to cheap tricks; you’ll have to take advantage of the environment to come out on top, and victory feels like a matter of mastery of the map as much as brute strength.

On the other end of the map spectrum, however, are the semi-random battles encountered in the dungeons. These quick fights take place on same-y, often featureless maps where the tactical elements of the battle system are more or less reduced to window dressing. They’re fun in a different way, to be sure, but it’s still a bit disappointing the maps feel so phoned-in — they could have been bite-sized tactical puzzles rather than bite-sized beat-‘em-ups. Sitting somewhere in the middle are the world map battles against zombie Terrors and intervening armies; sometimes these maps approach the strategic design heights of the main missions, and sometimes they’re large featureless plains.

One thing that really saves these less interesting maps is the addition of the ’Tactics’ system to Echoes’ toolkit. This lets you give blanket orders to all units who haven’t yet moved in the turn, advising them to charge the enemy, improvise as best they know, fall back, or gather on the leader (Alm or Celica). It may sound like a soft fix, but this hugely cuts down on the feeling of ‘turn-based marching’ that can occur on sparsely designed SRPG maps — all you need to do is move Celica (or Alm) and then have everyone else follow, rather than moving ten little chess pieces one-by-one. Tactics are also helpful in random battles when you’re much stronger than the enemy — just have everyone charge and watch for the win! — or if you know what you want to do with a few key units but are happy to let the others improvise for a turn or two — an excellent way to stave off decision paralysis.

On the topic of difficult decisions, one of the most immediately noticeable changes from Fates and Awakening is that in Echoes, the Fire Emblem Shipping Company (est. 2012) has ceased operations; marriage and children are no longer on the table, you can’t directly control how and with whom your combatants fall in love, and there’s no pairing your soldiers up to fight as a single romantically-charged unit. That will undoubtedly come as a disappointment to many, and we did miss the romance, though vestiges of those systems remain in more platonic forms. Characters can still level up their bonds by fighting within a few spaces of eachother, and hitting certain friendship ranks (C, B, and then A) will unlock Support Conversations that show their relationship deepening, as well as bonuses in combat that activate when fighting nearby.

The Supports are just as clever and charming as they were in Awakening or Fates, so it’s always a pleasure to see how your troops are getting on on the ground — not to mention a bit of a rush, since this time you’ll need to activate the conversations in battle, rather than in the safety of the barracks! And just because your armies aren’t the endlessly configurable smorgasbords of love that they were in the earlier 3DS Fire Emblems, that’s not to say there’s no romance in Echoes; on the contrary, there are some truly touching threads of affection woven into both Support Conversations and the larger story, and it’s very well-written, as you’d expect — just not of the choose-your-own-adventure variety.

Along with courtship, combat in Echoes is also handled quite differently to previous instalments. The first thing you’ll notice is that the Weapons Triangle — a rock-paper-scissors-stye chain of weaknesses that’s been at the heart of the series for many years — is gone; or, more accurately, wasn’t there yet when Gaiden first came out on the Famicom. We’re happy that Echoes decided not to shoehorn it in, because its absence makes for an appreciably distinct combat rhythm where terrain bonuses and positioning matter a great deal more than arms; the Echoes equivalent of abusing the triangle seems to be occupying all the forts, forests, and advantageous terrain you can find, and we loved the importance that places on the surrounding geography.

Beyond the Weapons Triangle, there are lot of smaller changes with weapons that add up to a different feel. Weapons never break, for instance, and magic-users no longer require Tomes to learn and use their spells, instead learning them by leveling up and casting them at the expense of a certain amount of HP. Each character has a ‘default’ weapon perma-equipped, though you can use their single inventory spot to arm them with special weapons you might find lying around. These equippable weapons are also a primary source of Skills — units learn most Skills by fighting enough battles with certain weapons equipped. The result of these changes is that a lot of character growth is tied to time-on-the-ground fighting; in other Fire Emblem games that would necessitate grinding, but in Echoes gives an extra purposes to the quicker random battles in dungeons and on the world map. We found ourselves focusing on survival on the main story maps while using the random battles as opportunities for min-maxing and Skill-learning; a nice split that made them each feel worthwhile.

Class changes are likewise straightforward and nicely streamlined here; you can change any eligible warrior’s class at any of the many statues of Mila you find throughout your travels, with no need for Master Seals or even donations of any kind. It’s quick and easy, and we like how your super-squishy all-villager starting party encourages you to class-change right away, without worrying about maximal growth. We do have to admit, however, that the available class options do seem a tad ‘tame’ coming directly off of Fates. There are a couple dozen standbys here, from Cavaliers and Pegasus Knights to Mages, Sages, and Saints, but nothing that really stands out from the fantasy canon norm; you won’t find any Dancers, Kitsunes, Mechanists, Maids, or Butlers, and we did miss that creativity in classes when building our armies. Still, that limited focus is part of what makes Echoes feel like a thematic throwback to earlier Emblems, and it’s an aesthetic that serves it very well.

Speaking of aesthetics, as much as Echoes does differently to the other 3DS Fire Emblem titles, it still stands by the same graphical engine to great effect. The system’s standard three-tiered character representation fits Echoes especially well; units are represented variously by tiny, stylized pixel art, gorgeously colourful character portraits, and 3D models. All three of these are appealing in their own way, but there’s something magical about the mix; watching the overhead chess match of a mission zoom in to show the frantic fighting on on the ground in 3D never gets old. The animation in these one-on-one bouts is particularly impressive this time around, too; units move smoothly through the lovingly choreographed fight scenes, with the surrounding terrain often incorporated, as when fighters parry back-and-forth up flights of stairs, or slice down patches of grass winding up en route to an opponent.

Echoes also adds a whole new dimension to the graphical presentation through its exploration sections, both in the first-person Professor Layton-style segments and the over-the-shoulder dungeons. Awakening and Fates both had inviting worlds, but never actually let players get up close outside of battle, and that freedom feels wonderful here. It’s exhilarating to get to crawl through Echoes’ dungeons not just because of the battles, but because you’re getting to roam a part of the world freely. Likewise, exploring the settlements in first-person really helps give a sense of Valentia’s architecture, natural setting, and daily life outside of the battlefield, which works wonders for world-building — Echoes has a calmer art style than Fates or Awakening, with softer colours and more of a classical fantasy feel, and being able to literally walk around in it helped us appreciate it all the more.

The stereoscopic 3D effect is also worth noting — at a time when more and more 3DS games seem to be jettisoning the feature, Echoes is a wonderful example of why it can be worth keeping the slider up. Battle scenes pop, dungeons become more immersive, transitions between the overhead map and individual skirmishes look amazing in 3D, and the explorable village scenes benefit both technically and artistically from the multiple layers. It’s perhaps most impressive in simple dialogue scenes, where you’ll have text boxes in front of character portraits, in front of a background with appreciable layers of depth of its own. And as a side-note, we love that these cutscenes now place your player character’s portrait and dialogue on the bottom screen, freeing up the top for larger views of your companions!

Those dialogue scenes are as enjoyable this time around as ever, as Echoes has been given a standout localization from 8-4, the same company responsible for Awakening. It’s characterful and fun, keeping a cohesive high-fantasy tone throughout while allowing for lots of individual voice from each character. It’s especially important in Echoes, since character designs tend to feel quite a bit closer in style than Awakening’s or Fates’ — all the playable characters in Echoes understandably seems like they could come from the same kingdom in terms of fashion — but the dialogue really does do a great job of imparting a distinctive personality on every member of your armies.

Breathing further life into the excellent localization is some top-notch vocal talent, and Echoes one-ups the series’ status quo with nearly every line voice-acted. From party members and villains to village NPCs, if someone has something to say, they’ll say it out loud, and that blanket coverage is a notable upgrade from the single-word vox-pops that accompanied minor dialogue in Awakening and Fates. It’s especially welcome in the Support Conversations, which are now fully voiced right from the start, and it’s not a case of quantity over quality — the acting is very well done, with a wide variety of deliveries, tones, and (mostly subtly performed) accents bringing a lot of character to both armies and to the larger world.

Fire Emblem’s music has been a series highlight since the start, and that tradition lives on in Echoes, with a wonderful orchestral score backing up the story. As a whole, it fits in very nicely with Fire Emblem’s staple martial-symphonic feel, but there’s also an impressive variety to the tracks you’ll hear, from playful dances accompanying childhood memories and Celtic-tinged themes in seaside villages to roaring battle marches and quiet harp reflections in temple sanctums. It also keeps in one of the 3DS games’ greatest tricks, where music swells up from light strings to add in horns and percussion for the battle theme each time a unit attacks an enemy and the camera zooms in, then settles back down as the view returns to a top-down focus — not new to Echoes, but still an incredibly satisfying marriage of music, graphics, and gameplay.

Conclusion

As the last Fire Emblem chapter on Nintendo’s heroic handheld, Echoes delivers a perfect swan song for the series’ 3DS days. This is a satisfying, deeply strategic adventure with an engaging, personal story and beautiful presentation, full of appealing art and lovely details that come alive as you play. But more than that, it’s also just delightfully different from its predecessors, in ways that only broaden its appeal: if you loved Awakening and Fates, this is close enough to be comfortable but with plenty of tweaks and additions to feel exciting and fresh; if you didn’t like those entries and yearn for a more ‘traditional’ Emblem experience, you’ll love Echoes’ throwbacks and unique touches; and if you’re a JRPG fan who’s never understood the appeal of the SRPG chessboard, explorable towns and dungeons make this a perfect point of entry to crossover.

Proof that the 3DS still has life left in it yet, Echoes is a phenomenal Fire Emblem and a wonderful tactical title to tuck into.

@NandN3ds Hence why I said "You're better than this!"Though I was off base, considering I hadn't looked at any other reviews at that point.

@MarcelRguez I haven't played it, but I've seen footage and read other people's impressions.Not one of the maps were changed. Not one. The few new maps may as well be from Gaiden due to their consistent blandness and mediocrity. There's still maps that see repeated use.

Also, the quote in your post proves the review writers have no idea what they're talking about. Gaiden is the least traditional FE game there is and Awakening took much from it. Sorry that I expect the modern gaming press to not be utterly stupid.

I was concerned that Echoes would end up being a rush job remake that did not stand up well against the other FE games on the 3DS. This review has put my mind to rest on that subject. I will be picking it up as soon as I can.

The only Fire Emblem games I've played are Awakening and the one for the GBA. (when they gave out those Ambassador games) Even though they were enjoyable they didn't really blow me away. I couldn't really get into or care about Awakenings story for some reason.

I'm just wondering if this would be different since it's supposedly the "black sheep" of Fire Emblem.

Awesome, now if only they could remake Fire Emblem 4: Geneology of Holy Wars and Fire Emblem 5: Thracia 776, that would be awesome too. Nintendo could start giving Switch the new Fire Emblem games and start doing FE remakes for the 3DS instead.

@AcridSkull I don't think Nintendo ever officially stated that, but with the next main-series FE game being developed for Switch (and intended to release in 2018), I think it's safe to assume that we won't be seeing another main-series FE title on 3DS.

I like the way this entry seems to be changing up the series' formula a bit. Won't be getting it for a good long while, though: I'm pretty burnt out on Fire Emblem after slogging through the Fates' campaigns.

If I play another FE before the one coming to the Nintendo Switch, it'll be The Sacred Stones on GBA. Or maybe that GBA one that was never released in the West.

@CrazedCavalier There's no need for that defensive attitude, I'm not accusing you of anything.

Besides that, which new maps are you referring to? Random encounter ones or actual chapter maps? And I'm sure Gaiden/SoV can be considered more 'classic' than Awakening and Fates in terms of art design and aesthetics, which is why many people (Morgan probably included) see this title as a "return to form" of sorts.

I've enjoyed Awakening and Fates (Conquest is indeed brutally difficult), but my favorite Fire Emblem to this day remains the first one localized in the U.S. on GBA because of the straightforwardness. Shadow Dragon had too much grinding, and the weird animal people plots of the GCN and Wii entries detracted from the worlds. Although I still enjoyed the battles and core gameplay, Awakening, and Fates in particular had too much window dressing and mystical silliness to make the stories very compelling to me (I liked Awakening better than Fates). Sounds like this entry is exactly what I've been waiting for since that first Fire Emblem on GBA. Also reminds me that I never finished Shadow Dragon, but I really enjoyed the parts of it I played.

Wait, childhood friends? So they completely changed the story from the original. They originally started off from opposing sides of the Valentian continent without having known each other, and weren't related at all. Edit: Nope, that's wrong, I forgot what happened.

When they did finally meet up, they split up soon after meeting, because they each had diametrically opposed philosophies and strategies on how to end the conflict. Alm decided to march directly against the emperor, whereas Celica decided to root out the demonic forces corrupting the land, as well as liberating various localities and informing them of the greater threat. They weren't friendly to each other until the final chapter, when they joined forces to take on Doma. From a storyline perspective, the point of doing that was to highlight how pointless war is, and the obliviousness of those who fight without question.

Good to hear that the 3DS style of gameplay holds up, and greatly enhances the original. But the story seems to lack the complexity of the original, despite the limitations of the NES. At least the music is still really good. (Although I think Land of Sorrow, one of the most powerful tracks of Gaiden, is too understated in Shadows of Valentia, so it doesn't quite match up to the high percussion March of the original It sounds very good aurally, but it's too happy and lighthearted.)

@PlywoodStick No, they didn't change it. It's just that most of it was in the manual.
In the original, they lived as children in Ram Village until Mycen took Celica before the events of the game to Novus Monastery, where she stayed until her story started. It's the exact same deal here, with a prologue chapter explicitly showing the events.

They still go their separate ways after an initially happy reunion at Zofia Castle. If anything, the story gets more "complex" with a new villain character serving as a foil to Alm (Alm wants power to protect and serve the people, Berkut wants power to rule and control them)-- though that's all there is to his character --and battling some Zofians as well.

They also built on Jedah trapping Celica with the intent of sacrificing her to Duma, though in a rather... controversial manner. And Rudolf's motivations are kept intact, in all their glorious stupidity.

So:
+Fully voice acted
+Can explore dungeons (I've been waiting forever for a Fire Emblem game that actually lets you explore)
+No more shipping (I'd gotten pretty tired of this goofy feature to be honest. It takes away from the serious vibe of earlier games, although you didn't have to use it.)

-Weapons still don't break (Kind of a bummer for me. I always enjoyed managing weapon durability.)

Sounds like I might get this after all. I never even did finish Fates. I did Birthright and got halfway through Conquest and just sort of lost interest. This one sounds a lot more concise and focused though.

What I'd love to see next is a remake that combines Blazing Sword and Binding Blade! (And make Roy less garbage!) They could call it the Elibe Saga or something like that.

@CrazedCavalier You're right, I forgot about that... Alm was born in Rigel, Celica in Sofia, Alm brought to Sofia and Celica to -Rigel- (Edit: a frickin' island, my memory sucks) in a trade off, although Celica was sent years after Alm arrived. It's unclear what all the timeframes are, though, since Alm was a newborn baby when he was sent to Ram Village, and they both lived together with Mycen for a time. I was thrown off by the childhood love story thing, since that wasn't in the original.

And LOL yeah, I kind of wish they changed the story behind Rudolf, his plan completely backfired and Alm/Celica had to fix all of his terrible mistakes.

I'm glad it appears this game goes back to its roots somewhat (from what I'm reading). I enjoyed Awakening, playing Fates at the moment (I hate the nonsense of My Castle and all the fluff in there, a blunming lottery?!), but my favourites are still the 3 GBA entries. I'm also glad this doesn't seem to have any of the nonsense around quests and children from 'magical time travelling other worldly astral planes and trans-dimensional intersections' and all that ridiculousness. I just can't take Awakening and Fates seriously.

@SanderEvers And you're likely right. But again, what we're doing here is speculating. (Also, I still reserve hope that we'll get an English release of "New Mystery of the Emblem" before it's all said and done, even if that wouldn't count as a new FE game.)

@zipmon"On the topic of difficult decisions, one of the most immediately noticeable changes from Fates and Awakening is that in Echoes, the Fire Emblem Shipping Company (est. 2012) has ceased operations; marriage and children are no longer on the table, you can’t directly control how and with whom your combatants fall in love, and there’s no pairing your soldiers up to fight as a single romantically-charged unit."

Hells yeah. I'm definitely picking this up. Fire Emblem is one of my most beloved franchises and I'm super ecstatic that Nintendo is giving it the flagship treatment like Zelda and Mario have been receiving for decades now. This franchise needs to reach it's popularity potential and this game brings it one step closer.

@CrazedCavalierYou mean the way you're embarrassing yourself trying to convince others they'll be disappointed in the game just because you are? If you don't like it, that's fine, but don't bash others just because they are looking forward to it. Not trying to be a jerk, just wanted to throw some advise out there.

@CrazedCavalier Considering the entire FE series was one failure away from permdeath until Awakening actually sold, I think "traditional" purists have to get get used to the idea that traditional FE formula just doesn't sell well enough to sustain the series. These Gaiden ideas that got pulled into Awakening and Fates seem to make it a lot more sustainable. The balancing act will be keeping it "FE enough" to please the traditionalists, but I doubt another "traditional" game will ever be made in the series. Not unless it becomes SO popular they can risk it on name alone!

If I were to guess Echoes is coming about in part because FE'18 will be reincorporating the JRPG aspects more heavily to reinvent the series into the HD world and this is probably an experiment to some extent for how that can work.

@Ralizah Kind of the same for me. I still have it on preorder because I fear if I don't physical copies will be gone, but after Awakening and then 2.1 editions of Fates I dont' think I can stand LOOKING at FE again. It doesn't help that I suck at it massively. If I touch this, I won't want to touch Warriors and FE'18 which I'm looking forward to.

This won't be a day 1 purchase for me, but the review has somewhat convinced me to get this one. I had misgivings about some of the "new" things introduced in this installment, but many of those have been put to rest now.

@NEStalgia They've hinted that they're open to more remakes if this does well enough. And Heroes is at least giving Elibe some exposure.Really, I'm mostly fine with Fates-- I just think there's stuff that needs to be called out and most nobody does it.

@The_Gerudo_King I'm not saying that, nor am I ashamed of most of what I've posted here: reviews by gaming journalists are often terrible.Virtually nobody called out Fates' bad writing. Virtually nobody called out Awakening's awful design and balance issues. SoV getting rosey reviews like this that don't call out its issues means IS will think it's OK to do remakes that barely tweak dated gameplay elements.

Ah, looking forward to another Nintendo "Part 2" game that shakes up tried and true formulas, lol. Since this entry never came west, it intrigues me to explore FE's roots, and I welcome the change of pace on action. If this game didn't do things in a different manner, I'd likely be burned out from pushing through Birthright, but I just cleared up my backlog to make room for this. Come on home FE2

@CrazedCavalierBut a review is just one man's opinion on the game. If that opinion doesn't coincide with your opinion, it doesn't make it wrong. You might not like the writing in one iteration, but maybe the reviewer does. You don't like the design and balance issues but maybe he doesn't see it that way. It's ok to have differing opinions but when you flat out tell people they'll be disappointed in the game for some arbitrary reason then it's you who needs to be adjusted, not the reviewer.

For some reason I was thinking this was coming out next week, nice. I have my preorder secured at Best Buy so will be picking up Friday along with the amiibo and dusting off my MM new 3DS XL. I've liked Awakening and Fates, but everything I'm seeing about the new games traditional style has me more excited for it. I'm not against games branching off from the tried and true gameplay methods to try new and or just different. I'm not sold yet on the DLC, but perhaps as I get further into the game I'll change my mind.

@MilitiaMan I'm not so sure about the porting of the 3DS Fire Emblems to Switch as something that could happen. Don't get me wrong I would love to see that as well. But I am excited for the Fire Emblem Warriors and this unknown Fire Emblem Switch game. Hopefully we get some gameplay footage at E3 next month.

@NEStalgia I think Awakening provided a good alternative for traditional and new players. Those wanting the old method could have it and those afraid of the permadeath function could turn it off and still enjoy the story without the real challenge. It sounds to me like Echoes will do a good job of bringing in features of the original title without alienating newer players of Awakening and Fates. Personally I like the dungeon RPG style gameplay and the loss of the whole child feature.

@Nico07 I'm not one of the traditionalist fans, first being exposed to the series on the Wii so I don't have the same kind of attachment to the old school ways as I do with, say, Mario or Zelda, or Metroid (Forget Prime, I want a REAL Metroid game! ), but the main theme I keep hearing from most long time fans is that Awakening was kind of the most destructive to the "old ways". I kind of figured the whole Fates concept of two versions of the game, one for Awakening fans, one for old fans, would be the only way they could balance that, but I'd love it if they could either please everyone, or just radically change the structure so it's new to everyone. I'm still thinking the Switch one will do that. First FE on an HD console, bigger exposure after Smash and Warriors....it's a good chance to try new things. And maybe if Echoes gets good feedback the RPG elements will have a role in that.

@Arngrim Most of Awakening's features were taken from Gaiden, notably bad map design and grinding (which can be pretty much ignored on Normal but is mandatory on Hard).

Though personally, I'd have liked a fuller remake that kept the basics of Gaiden intact while overhauling the maps and using Fates' pair-up system. As-is the gameplay is somewhat lacking in depth, mostly just nerfing what was good in Gaiden and introducing a handful of broken skills to the mix.

@BensonUii Yeah, I feel the same way. I kinda wanted to see the shipping and pairing up on the battlefield go away. I hope this game will play a bit more like some of the GBA titles. On that note, I need a Sacred Stones remake as well...

I'm looking forward to this. Glad the reviews are good.I've been playing Fates this week, and still have a few chapters left. I was going to wait 3 weeks and play Echoes on the new 2DS but the 3D effects in Fates add so much, in both the cutscenes and the zoom-in battle animations, that I'm going to want the full experience for this one too.

@LinkSword I guess what I mean is that I did the grinding parts without really understanding that was their purpose, and the game ended up being one of the easier entries in the series for me. I suppose I could have foregone the grinding to make the game harder on myself.

I mean, it was still a great game, just not one of my favorites among Fire Emblem entries. You don't have to insult people to make a point, you know.

As one of the permadeath purists, I actually somewhat like the concept of the whole Wheel thing, but it sounds like both the wheel and Casual mode are in. Seems a bit overkill. However it's worth noting that if this game uses the same RNG as Gaiden, then the Wheel is welcomed because that game had some impressive levels of BS in the RNG. I'm talking you missing at 80+ accuracy and the enemy hitting you consistently at half that. Not to mention the criticals. Oh god the criticals. The Wheel in my opinion is a much better alternative than Casual mode because the Wheel doesn't just make the game easier, but also encourages experimentation.

I agree, the review is actually one of the better written ones I've seen. As usual, it's all about how CrazedCavlier can't handle differing opinions without going ape. He pretty much insulted me over and over simply for my low opinion of Fates, so it's no surprise he can't handle this review without foaming at the mouth.

Anywho, the review is pretty fair in the summary. SoV is a game that should appeal to both sides of the fanbases. I know I for one am getting weary of pocket dimensions and time travel in FE. It'll be nice to go back to the simpler storylines that focus more on what FE is actually about. It's a bit of a let-down that they didn't bother to try and improve the maps or make battles more dynamic, but that was basically the original's fault. It looks like they stayed pretty faithful to Gaiden while adding some polish to the overall game. One feature I'm interested in for sure is dungeon crawling.

At the risk of ticking off old-school Gaiden fans, I always found Gaiden to be a goofy game. It's ridiculous and a lot of the design choices were pretty bad. The remake looks like it's actually pretty great though and I'm glad to be playing this instead of Birthright or Conquest. (Although Conquest was pretty rad, you can't fix a broken story).

Not trying to pick an argument, but where exactly does this notion that Casual mode saved the franchise come from? I would have assumed it had more to do with the fact they actually bothered to advertise this game than the addition of a Casual mode. I keep hearing the newcomers claim Awakening saved the franchise because of Casual Mode but I've never seen much in the way of actual proof. Yes, we know that Awakening may have been the last game but how can we be so certain it was Casual mode that saved it? Casual Mode wasn't even first introduced in Awakening, it was first introduced in Mystery of the Emblem for DS. Even if there were a number of people interested in the franchise, I have a hard time believing there were THAT many people introduced to the series through casual mode. Wouldn't it make more sense to assume it was the fact the game was MARKETED was what saved the series, not an optional game mode? Hell, I saw commercials for Awakening on TV, posters for it on store windows, etc.. You didn't see this kind of marketing for any FE game prior. Nintendo was aware that Awakening was going to be the final game and poured all their resources into the marketing. To me, that's a far more sensible reason to assume Awakening saved the franchise rather than some game mode that I doubt that many people actually play.

With that said, I've always been of the opinion that if you have to play on Casual mode, you probably shouldn't be playing FE to begin with. Permadeath was a hallmark of the series. To have a mode that removes that has never sat well with me, optional or not. Casual mode basically takes out all strategy and turns the game into Dynasty Warriors. I mean, imagine if Dark Souls had a mode that made it possible to keep souls after dying. What's the point of that? It just always struck me as weird design decision to put that in, even if it was to drag new fans in.The core of the gameplay is the danger involved in losing a unit that you may care about. Casual mode takes away any sense of danger and basically renders that whole point moot. You could argue that most fans reset, but choosing between resetting and having to redo a map you spent 30 minutes on or soldiering on without that unit is all part of the FE experience. To remove that just baffles me to no end.

I don't really fault FE too much for this though. I'm gradually getting used to the fact that games today have to be "accessible" (which usually means dumbed down or given some silly low-difficulty mode. Or both.) Persona 5 also did this crap with "Safety Mode" so, I'm learning to cope with it.

@Onion before Awakening Fire Emblem's sales were actually decreasing despite advertising. There was one Fire Emblem game in the series that was revealed at E3 back when it was a big event...not Awakening, not Fates. But Radiant Dawn.

It ended up being the worst selling Fire Emblem that released outside of Japan and the absolute lowest selling in Japan itself Despite significant advertising and being on Nintendo's biggest selling home console. It's no surprise though, if the game was met with indifference from core gamers at E3 despite being core focused advertising is nothing but a waste as the average consumer isn't going to appreciate low production values(Zihark's text bleep "voice", slow gameplay and some unexplained battle cutscene.

The difference between Fire Emblem now and back then is that it's more marketable, the features it has now is better for capturing the interest of more players and casual mode makes it more accessible. They created more reasons for players to pick it up and enticed players who otherwise would have been turned away by the permadeath system and made them very obvious in marketing.

I'd strongly believe pre-Awakening FE wouldn't have sold much better even if they had more advertising simply because they didn't add anything to the games to actually interest people who weren't already interested in Fire Emblem.

That's a pretty solid argument. I would argue that RD sold poorly because it was kind of a weird game overall that made strange decisions, but you have a point. I also don't recall RD being that heavily marketed in the US. It was just kind of there. Not to mention I recall folks here in the US had a hell of a time finding a copy. Not sure if that was true for EU fans or not. Still, as I said in my above post, Casual mode WAS present in Mystery of the Emblem for DS, so it's not as if Awakening is the first game to give us casual mode and a custom avatar. Unfortunately, because that game was never released in the US/EU, we don't know for sure if casual mode would have actually mattered or not.

If I understand what you're saying correctly, you're basically saying that the sales for FE games in the US and EU had a hit a ceiling, and Casual Mode was what brought in enough blood to boost sales? That's solid reasoning, but that's a lot of faith to put into a single game mode that no one I know even plays on. If Casual mode really did bring in this many new fans, then that's quite impressive. I'm a little disappointed that today's gamers are so lightweight that they can't handle permadeath, though. I suppose that can't be helped.

EDIT: Also I'm gonna have to save that first link. it does such a good job of illustrating the point I often make about how much permadeath matters to the core experience. The look on that girl's face is priceless! Looking up other commercials, they too focus on permadeath, so it's undeniable this was a huge part of the franchise. Did Radiant Dawn actually get any commercials in the US or EU? I honestly never saw any.

@Onion Close, what I mean is that the series did hit a ceiling with permdeath. Casual mode made it more accessible in a way that the games could appeal to a bigger audience in different ways, not just what casual mode by itself brings.

It meant that expanding features that appeal to more casual players(e.g. supports, world map, grinding) actually had more impact as the game was accessible to players who were in those lighter aspects and the typical grid based Fire Emblem gameplay but were warded away by perma-death.

Fair enough. I don't really understand why anyone would have been scared off by permadeath, but I've met people over the years who admitted they were afraid of things like that and weapon breaking, so it makes sense. However, it's important to bear in mind that RD's circumstances were way different from Awakening's, as that game was released to a totally different crowd. Most people who owned a Wii probably weren't looking for a SRPG. The Wii was all about reaching out to new audiences, then they release a game that's considered one of the hardest in the series on that console? Yeah. That was bound to go up in smoke. I'm thinking that Awakening coming out on 3DS (and not Wii U) also helped a lot. Not only are most FE fans by that point used to the games coming out on handhelds, but the 3DS has a lot more fans than the Wii U. Also it's worth pointing out that the advertising RD got doesn't even compare to what Awakening got. You may be right that previous FEs may not have sold even with marketing, but there's no denying they put some serious buck into Awakening's marketing campaign.

I'm still not totally convinced that this single mode was enough to boost sales to that extent, but the overall trappings of Awakening does make it the best game suited to beginners. I actually recommended Awakening to a friend for that very reason so even I can't deny that Awakening is super accessible. That accessibility probably does make it a lot more attractive to newcomers, even if I find it really strange that people are that afraid of consequence in games. I'm still of the opinion that the addition of casual mode cheapens the overall gameplay, and IS doesn't really do anything to fix this. Basically, you pick Casual and then play the game with no stakes or pick Classic and play it as it was meant to be played. It feels less like Casual is a core part of the game and just thrown in to pacify the less hardcore crowd. I keep wondering if there's some compromise to this instead of having two extremes, but that's a topic for another conversation.

That said casual mode probably did save it. And you already made the argument why without realizing it!

"t if you have to play on Casual mode, you probably shouldn't be playing FE to begin with"

So a lot of people agreed. And they had to play on casual. So the didn't play FE. And they didn't buy FE. And so it wasn't profitable to make FE. Casual fixed that

Lots of people suck at FE, myself included. You may have the benefit of growing with the series over decades starting with the basics, and don't realize how the complexity piled up in that time. Without casual inserted if learning, you can just hit brick walls and it becomes unfun. I play on casual starting with awakening, and learn a little more how to play each game while still enjoying it without frustration Gaming is to fun to make it unfun

@Onion You were claiming that Conquest was easier than most games in the series. I gave factual evidence that FE7 was easier than it after stating it's harder than the majority of the series.

You put up walls of text accusing me of "spreading falsehoods" and "not being good at games", and then saying I was "in denial" and "trying to make an impossible argument". While also claiming "Even people who aren't good at strategy games can beat Conquest on Hard/Classic, while the same can't be said for FE7".

All I've done is call out the reviewer's praise of an oft-mocked and criticized feature of the game and a factually incorrect statement.
I tried to have a legitimate conversation and argument at one point with you there. You put up paragraphs of text that said mostly nothing other than insults directed my way. I'm fine with the opinions of others as long as they themselves are tolerable/tolerate other opinions. In no way, shape, or form was I "foaming at the mouth"-- though at one point I did bemoan the gaming press's lack of critical thinking when it came to reviews.

Whoa, way to turn my words around on me! You're taking my words somewhat out of context but in doing so you still make a great point. The problem there is as I said in my above post, by picking casual, you're basically picking a mode that was thrown in to appeal to casual players and then doing nothing to really change the gameplay. So picking casual is the same as only playing half the game. You're missing out on a key component of it. Also Awakening was much easier even without casual mode. I'm sure you would have done fine without it, but I see where you're coming from and I can see your reasoning.

I don't want people to get the impression I hate fun or that I hate new fans mind you, I'm just very passionate about this series and that may cause me to make somewhat elitist comments. I'd be saying the same thing about any franchise I felt went in a weird direction. If Contra 4 had been made easier for example? Yeah, I'd be saying the same thing.

I don't want to come off as anti-fun, but if you're bad at the game, the solution should be to get better at it, not pick a mode that is devoid of any real challenge. Still, it's cool. People can play how they want, I'm basically just some dinosaur who can't get out of the past. (Basically, frustration was PART of gaming back then.)

And that was grounds to childishly insult me... how exactly? Do you see any of the other people I'm talking to doing that? No. You don't. Because they're reasonable people who realize that having an opinion isn't the worst thing in the world and aren't attacking people over it. It's called being civil. Try it out sometime. I could argue that your so called "factual evidence" was actually purely anecdotal (claiming enemies in Conquest are stronger but then offering no actual data to support that), but as far as I'm concerned you lost that argument the moment you started insulting me. Now you're attacking the reviewer simply for them having an opinion you don't agree with. I see a pattern of behavior here! Either way I'm not interested in going over ancient history with you cause I'm not keen on setting myself up for more lame insults.

Using terms like "utterly stupid" and "shill" (not to mention trying to dictate how people would feel about the game based on arbitrary nonsense) goes a bit beyond that, dude. You can try to act like you're a rational person all you want, but the wording you use is so aggressive and hostile, it doesn't do you any credit at all.

@Onion Don't play high and mighty with me. And I could easily turn around basically everything you said.
Our previous argument was stupid. You started that stupid. And you're the one who felt like initiating potshots again-- I defended and explained myself and the situation. The person who can't let things go and has to get off insults is yourself.

Sir, I'm an onion. I'm born from the ground. I can't be high and mighty with anyone!

And way to prove my point for me dude. You just jumped right in saying stupid this and stupid that. I don't even think I have to say any more. You make this way too easy. Arguing with you is basically casual mode.

No but you tend to word things in an insulting manner. Whether you intend to or not, you word things so needlessly hostile it's impossible for me NOT to picture someone foaming at the mouth over a review on a website. I hate repeating myself but using words like "utterly stupid", "shill" and other needlessly strong words to make your point actually does the opposite; it destroys your point because you can't make it without being insulting.

Though if you're saying your argument with me was stupid, far be it for me to disagree.

EDIT: For the record though, I do agree with you on the maps thing, just not the way you worded it.

@msvt Yeah, I was hamming it up a bit. It's just that the maps are the major con of the game and deserve to be criticized and pointed out-- it's disappointing that many review outlets haven't criticized them.

Thank you. Someone needed to say it. Sure, some people will be disappointed with this game, but others will love it (not everyone loves the grindy options of Awakening of and Sacred Stones for example, but others love it because they can get all the interactions and use any character with ease). This guy is friggin' dedicated to trying to convince other people their preferences are wrong, which is just a waste of breath and comment space.

Nailed it. He's delusional. He can't handle other opinions without insulting. He literally started off his argument with me in the past by calling me pathetic, etc. Trying to dictate people's opinions is ridiculous.

@R_Champ I made one comment poking at their praise of an oft-criticized feature and called out a factually incorrect statement-- besides that I've just been posting as normal.
For the record, I am excited for the game-- I just know what to expect and wish the gaming press wouldn't overrate things.
An earlier comment of mine:
"Everything looks great besides the maps; unlike some people, one negative isn't enough to drown out my hype."

@Onion My first post in that chain:
"FE7 - 12 (well, Radiant Dawn ties it) are easier than Conquest. FE1 and Gaiden can be broken into tiny pieces. FE4 isn't much better. And FE3 is pretty straightforward. Please, just stop."

You were trying to make an impossible argument that other people even called you out on, but you kept going in a circle. The one and only time I used "pathetic" was at the end of my fourth comment, criticizing your statement that "even people who've never played strategy games can beat Conquest on Hard/Classic while the same can't be said for FE7". I then quoted your insult back at you verbatim before leaving it be. Anybody can check my comment history or the comments on the article to see for themselves: http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2017/03/video_nintendos_fire_emblem_echoes_overview_shows_how_it_shakes_up_the_formula

You are so hung up on vilifying me you're making up stuff. Seriously, I probably wouldn't have said a thing this time around if you didn't feel the need to bring that mess up again to try and insult me. And yet here you do it.

@Onion So I wrote a whole big response and it somehow got lost before even getting to post it....argh!

So I'll start in the middle Basically, FE is a very complex game and is based in part on some very archaic designs it's stuck carrying forward. I think long time veterans don't appreciate how much innate knowledge of what to do they've gained by slowly progressing with the series from simpler times and tend to hold newcomers to a standard they can't possibly have if they didn't experience what came before. Things you innately know to do (or not do) in FE others don't, and you find out all to late when everything falls apart that you didn't know, which involves re-treading a LOT of time redoing levels. One thing as I get older is I get less patience for re-doing the same thing over and over. I'd GLADLY give up casual mode if I could gain "save anywhere" and reload a save state from a point before I began a failed strategy. The wheel partly does this, but games like Valkyria Chronicles go farther, you can rewind time to any point in time in the battle and roll back the turns, which makes the game infinitely more playable to try different strategies without feeling like you're wasting unlimited time redoing things over and over. Take away casual and give me unlimited turn roll back or saves, and I'll be happier. But if FE's going to keep me locked to every guesstimate I make, casual at least means I can try to salvage the map with whatever situation I end up in and not have to replay things. IT doesn't mean I don't try to not get characters killed, but a lack of knowledge means I'll be putting characters in bad positions far more often than you, stuck replaying far more often than you, and thus get frustrated with the game and quit it (and not buy the next one) much more probably.

Similarly imagine Breath of the Wild without fast travel because that makes it too accessible. So every time you want to check a shop in Gerudo Town you have to WALK all the way from Akkala. A few times of that, and you put the game away forever.

But I don't think it detracts from the game. You're still playing to win, and you're still playing to not lose battles. The difference is not having to restart the whole map when you don't succeed. For you it might change your perspective because you're used to not getting characters killed or knowing when you're sacrificing one. For non-veteran players when you lose your lord on the 5th map, the game would get irritating fast! But it also gives you more opportunities to salvage the map with what you have left and therefore figure out more details in the game as well. Something that would be an unfun process if you're stuck with replaying the 5th map 15 times "until you get it right."

But it's that purist viewpoint that says "this is a genre that demands you just keep redoing it forever until you learn to get it right. No breaks, conveniences, time savers, or leeway is permitted!" that creates a commercial problem. Only a small subset of people are going to find that obsessive play fun or rewarding. It turns a game into a job for everyone else, and a game that becomes a job is a game you don't buy. Being able to TRY to get it right but be able to solve the problem other ways if you don't know how means more people can try to solve the map with different methods without losing out on the ability to play other levels better.

I'd take it one step further though, that mentality crosses two genres. SRPGs are still RPGs that involve character grinding and leveling. That tactical purity perspective assumes a full on tactical game. If this were a grid-based game but had pre-formed characters with fixed stats for the map, I could actually appreciate that rigid "you must get it right" gameplay. If you started each map with pre-determined stats in pre-determined places and your goal was to find the strategy to win and keep them all alive, you would know you actually could do it and could keep trying. But as its' an RPG, your leveling decisions, grinding, prior character usage, upgrades purchased, etc all affect what you have on the map. Any errors or lack of knowledge there (I tend to re-use characters and I tend to not actually upgrade them, not knowing who to upgrade, hoarding the stones forever, so whatever class everyone is in map 1, they're the same maxed class on map 25 until I "know who to upgrade." ) affect you later. So you can end up in untenable positions if you errored at any point in the whole GAME! Fire Emblem: Tactics Could be a fun way to do things the purist way. I'll still hold out for free saves or turn rollback. Until then I'll keep casual on so I don't have to redo everything all the time

Granted if they took away the ability to play the classic way, I could see the veterans being upset. But letting you pick if you play that way or not, certainly not harming classic play, other than harming the elitist perspective that "only people who played right can really count their victories." But if the series is to endure, it needs to sell. I can say for certain if I were forced to play "classic", Awakening would have been my last FE, probably forever, because I would be unlikely to take another chance spending money on a miserable experience when so many other fun games exist. So my $40 for Birthright, $40 for Conquest, $25 for Revelations, $40 for Echoes, and $60 for FE Switch '18 would not have gone into supporting the FE series

^This folks is how you present a counter-argument. Take note, my crazed cavalier friend! (Sucks that you had lost your post though) Anywho...

Your assessment is pretty fair, but also a bit presumptuous. I've had several friends who never touched FE who had absolutely no problem in adjusting to FE via Awakening. They transitioned just fine. While it's true that I'm looking at things from the perspective of a long-time fan, my opinion on Awakening first changed when my newcomer friends made short work of Awakening with minimal difficulty AND on classic mode too. I had always known Awakening was easier but that really clinched it for me. It's for that reason I feel like newcomers should have no problem adjusting to FE. It's not that complex, and Awakening was the perfect game to get their feet wet. That much I can agree with, but then why did we also need Birthright and Conquest? Conquest would have been fine, but why Birthright too? Doesn't help that virtually no one I know liked Birthright. Then you have the whole Phoenix Mode thing which is ugh... I don't even wanna go there.

That said, I agree on the wheel. I think it's a pretty cool compromise for casual mode, but I feel it's a bit weird to include both casual AND the wheel (Assuming that's the case, I haven't played it yet.). You would think I hate the Wheel but I actually think it sounds like a good idea. I mentioned somewhere above that Gaiden had some weird RNG going on where it would seem to favor the enemies way too much, so the wheel does seem like a good counter to that. 95% of the time however, a death is the player's fault, not bad luck or the game itself cheating. This wasn't the case for Gaiden, but it's the case for almost every other FE.

Actually though, FE4 did allow you to save anywhere. So there's that. Fast travel in Breath of the Wild is kind of a moot point though. Fast travel has nothing to do with difficulty or challenge. Not to mention the option to travel from one point to another quickly has literally been in every Zelda game, even the first. You could push rocks to access warp points to other areas quickly. So fast travel in BotW isn't accessible so much as just doing what Zelda games have basically always allowed anyway.

The problem with casual mode is that the devs don't really factor it into the overall game. It's just thrown in last minute. Take Final Fantasy Tactics for example. It has a permadeath function where units that die vanish after 3 turns. That was a core part of the game. Without it, players have no reason to worry about losing units. By comparison, Shining Force 2 has no permadeath, but the maps were designed around the fact that you may lose units. The penalty for death in Shining Force 1-2 is that winning the battle without that unit might be hard. Shining Force 3 made is so that losing a unit meant they lost their friendship status with another unit, so these games all had some form of penalty for unit death. This is in addition to having to pay to revive your units on those games. (At least, I think so) FE on Casual has no real penalty for death.

With Fire Emblem, they didn't really work around casual mode all that much. My problem is less that it exists and more that it exists in the form it currently has. As it stands, there's almost no incentive to pick casual or classic or even experiment between the two. Casual is just classic but without permadeath. It's for that reason, I like the concept of the wheel and I would hope that future games take out casual entirely and replace them with interesting mechanics like this.

I can see your point about the series needing casual mode, though. It makes sense that for the series to stay strong, it needs something akin to that mode. I just find the mode in it's current state to just be a cheap addition. Intelligent Systems could come up with a way better method if they tried. One idea I always tinkered with in my head is the concept of trading gold to revive a unit (such as buying a really expensive staff) but that's a whole different topic.

Bottom line is, I can see why casual mode is there, but I'm still not totally happy with it. I understand that gamers today want to complete a game with as few obstacles as possible, but to me, that was never what FE was about. I will never see casual mode as anything more than a sell-out to draw in new fans. I don't like casual mode, and I never will. While you make a fantastic argument and I applaud you for it, that's not something you can change. I will always dislike the mode and feel like it shouldn't be there. For me, when people say "I became a FE fan because of casual mode", my immediate thought is "then you aren't really a fan". I know that's a horrible, elitist way of thinking, but it's honestly how I feel about it. FE for me is a game that is best when you factor in the sum of all it's parts. People who like casual and became fans because of it to me were never fans. They became fans after a hallmark of the series was taken out (albeit optionally).

So with that being said, it's probably easiest to just agree to disagree.

Good review, and actually on time. Lately the reviews on this site arrive very late. For example, Kirby clash deluxe hasn't even been reviewed yet, and its out for many weeks now!!

As for people who feel 3DS fatigue: If Nintendo continues with the 3DS but also with very strong 3DS games, I can't say that's bad. Its the games that matter. This doesn't look like half-baked, and Ever oasis could be fun too. Of course most upcoming 3DS games look a bit half-baked (not that interesting stuff and ports), but now and then there might still be a gem. As for a 2D Zelda: I would prefer a very strong one on Switch, with great graphics. But if they choose to do a pretty good one on the 3DS, I think I'll be okay with that.

Wow those friends must be pretty experienced with their similar games. With Radiant Dawn I never made it past the first few maps With Awakening I struggled mightily throughout and did lean on resurrection a multitude of times. However I will also note that I did not grind in the optional battles, I just did story missions and paralogues only. And I never re-classed a single character. I was always too afraid to screw up spending stones on the wrong thing. But I found it quite challenging regardless and never really felt I knew what I was doing well enough.

Maybe better tutorials, slower pacing, and yes, save anywhere and infinite turn rollback (none of this 3 times per map nonsense) would be better than casual mode. Right now you get a bunch of hand holding "this is how you move units" and "this is how you fight" type tutorial missions, and never anything showing you how to strategically use units and how to learn how to position advantageously in a more pointed lesson beyond the basic triangle.

The other games you mentioned do handle permadeath a little differently, but short of FF tactics: they all share the same theme of being low in sales as well. And FF tactics clearly has a great system in place that you can account for.

The one big thing though that I find interesting is that you say "casual is just classic without permadeath", but that was kind of my point, it doesn't really change the game at all other than removing a penalty that's annoying and frustrating to many people. I would have thought that would be a strong point about it to veteran players: It doesn't affect the difficulty, just the punishment.

But FE does have that problem. It may be a "hallmark" feature, but it's a feature that pleases far fewer people than it displeases, and most people that don't buy the game would avoid it because of the feature, while the small group of people that were buying the game buy it because of that feature, yet including the option of whether it has that feature or not, seems to displease that smaller group. As a studio they kind of have the option of pleasing the core group (and probably not selling enough copies because it's a small group), flipping off the core group and making the game different to please more people (losing the small group possibly), or trying to balance it and just let you pick how to play (which seems to have the same effect as #2)

There's the other path, you mentioned the permadeath systems in other games, but if they changed that system they'd have to make it integral to the game and change the core gameplay mechanics, in which case the core group wouldn't be able to play it their classic way at all! Rather than just giving the option of "true fan" or "not true fan" and picking whether you turn it on or off, it would be an all new system and imagine the fan wars that would happen then!

I could be in the middle. From what I heard, Awakening was only easy because you could grind until you're OP. I didn't do that so it was not easy (I did the same with Birthright, I just went from story mission to story mission like Conquest and older FE). That could have been adding in challenge. IMO grinding in optional missions in an SRPG is kind of boring. I don't mind regular RPG grinding, but in SRPGs it gets monotonous to me....drives me crazy in Devil Survivor too, though it's more essential there to get more demons to synthesize.

@Syrek24 For a guy who's trying to expose someone for being arrogant, hostile and over dramatic, you're contradicting your argument by being arrogant, hostile, and over dramatic. Please, take your own advice and learn to control your own emotions. Because the person you just described was you my friend.

Actually you're right, they DO have past experience with the genre, but as for how extensive that experience goes... I'm insure. I know they've played Xcom 1 and 2, which basically puts FE to shame in the difficulty department. Xcom also has a permadeath feature so they're more adjusted to that, but I think they just save scum. Not sure how they play. Either way, you'e right on the money about that.

This brings up the question of if FE is the franchise for people new to the genre and to be honest? I don't know. The games are supposedly well known for being punishing and difficult, but it's so inconsistent on that. FE7 I think most will agree does a good job of easing the player in while also being challenging, but then you've got Sacred Stones which is way easier and came out right after. Path of Radiance wasn't too hard, but in the US it was made easier.

As for Awakening, the reason that game is easy isn't so much the grinding as it is the fact the enemies are way weaker than you. Normal mode is actually more like Easy mode and Hard mode is a bit closer to what you'd expect from FE. Though, grinding does factor in a lot. This is in addition to the broken skill system which allows you to equip 5 OP as hell skills at once.

While it's true that casual only does one thing differently, that one thing makes up 75% of FE's challenge. Take that away and you lose most of the challenge. What I'd propose is making casual mode an actual MODE, meaning imposing some different rules for how it plays as opposed to just lazily reviving your units. I can't think of any SRPG that has such a lazy waiving of unit death. Even Super Robot Wars has a penalty for unit death, such as having to pay to repair the cost of the mech. Casual mode offers no such punishment, making it a lazy and ultimately lacking in challenge. Like I said, it's just two extremes. One being revival of units with no penalty, the other being harshly punishing the player for losing a precious unit.

I do agree that under the circumstances, Casual and Classic are a good solution for now, but I've been hoping they would do a bit more with the idea rather than just lazily removing a core mechanic and calling it a day. it's like removing lives from Mario but leaving coins and scores intact. What's the point? Intelligent Systems could do better than that, but choose not to. The Wheel system is the closest I've seen them come to trying something new and reasonable to lessen the blow FE games sometimes deal. The wheel actually ADDs to the game, not taking away anything. In fact, you can collect gears to add to the amount of times you can use it. To me this is an actual feature and not just the omission of a core mechanic. This is the kind of thing I think would satisfy both sides.

Ok I have played Echo. Yes it's better than Fate but not as good as Awakening.

Fate has production values, it's lengthy and has more content but that's also the con: too long and full of gimmicks. Echo is simpler, no town building or relationships, it's a straight forward strategy turn based game with a good narrative. In fact the story is better than the convoluted one in Fate. It's almost similar to Awakening.